New research suggests Rob Ford’s populist appeal could be duplicated across Canada

You're pushing the idea that Ford will be chosen as leader-which assumes that the Ontario PC's will have forgotten that he and his brother were total disasters when the ran Toronto

The whole point is that a large number of Ontario PC members - perhaps enough for Ford to win under their voting system - don't think the Fords were a disaster at all. They see the Fords as heroes trying to "fix" Toronto. Of course you don't think that and I don't think that either, but don't project your views onto them.

Didn't "Angry Tom" campaign to the right of Trudeau? As I recall Mulcair promised "balanced budgets" ala Harper.

Wasn't it "a la Party policy"?

For interest's sake, didn't the BC NDP just campaign and win with a similar promise?

No and no. Mulcair promised no deficits under any circumstances and just as importantly, no personal income tax increases for anyone. Both are contrary to Federal NDP policy.

The BC NDP's platform promised a balanced budget in 2017/2018, i.e. during the fiscal year in which they took office, and subsequently "We will aim to balance in every year as government, but not at the expense of children, seniors, families and the most vulnerable." They also promised and have already delivered an income tax increase for those with incomes over $150K.

It's hard to seriously compare household budgeting and government budgeting because of the extra powers of government. Although I would say that ultimate problem for both to stay out bankruptcy. An average household is one tragic event away from bankruptcy. To bankrupt a modern government it would take mismanagement of historic scale.

Household deals with excessive debt.

1. Pay it out off.

2. Bankruptcy

Government deals with debt.

1. Pay it down

2. Bankruptcy - a or b

a. Lose access to the international credit market. Balance the budget, cold turkey, very painful indeed.

b. Tap the monteraty fund to help balance the budget. You lose control of budget issues, your national assets are leased or sold to foreign investors, laws of the land are changed that foreign investors get first dibs on excess capital(they are first to be paid).

3. Use the extensive taxing power of government. It's a matter of much how GDP % you want to take.

4. An of course you can print currency but there are limits to how much you can print. Effectively your lowering debt by debasing your currently. And of course the national bank can print money to cover the budget overruns, this a very rare situation in modern finance. Taboo. Buts its their.

Mr. Magoo keeps comparing national budgets to household ones. This is a favourite right-wing trope. No matter how many times it's proven to be fallacious, it won't die. It's seductive for the same just-world-fallacy reasons that lead the right to oppose welfare programs. It implies that the world can be neatly divided into Goofus and Gallant nations, the Grasshoppers and Ants who either saved food for the winter or frivolously forgot to.

Households, of course, don't set their own salaries. They don't print their own money (or give their refrigerators the authority to print money). They don't have debt issued as IOUs to themselves. They can't pull out of a depression by using deficit spending to go to war with the house next door, then get rewarded with a massive bailout. The only thing a household budget has in common with a nation's budget is that both are denominated in currency.

And of course the whole fallacy is, as I pointed out, most households are in debt. If anyone required people to pay off a mortgage on demand, 99.9% wouldn't be able to. Not to mention credit card debt, car loans, and other types of loans.

The way to bring moral choices into it is to call out the immorality of global austerity capitalism, and give up the ridiculous idea that that system can somehow be "reformed". Those running it now are totally uninterested in ever restoring any humanity or any recognition of the value of anything not solely about short-term individual self-interest-they can only be forced, from below, to make concessions as a result of the creation of a mass movement for social and economic justice, and only if that movement is strong enough to pose a real threat to the system's survival.

Do you mean austerity capitalism or capitalism in general?

Nowadays, all capitalist countries are practicing austerity capitalism-there are none where any of the forces of capital are backing off from their perpetual demands for more cuts in benefits, for more weakening of unions, for more environmental deregulation, for more cuts in funding in education and therefore for higher tuition for university.

It's simply a monolith now...there is no divergence anywhere among countries who privilege "market values".

Norway is social democratic and, as a mixed economy, is the one exception.

Also Portugal, to an extent. But any country in the "golden straightjacket" of the EU cannot be fully considered free of austerityism. If there's such a word.

Thanks for referencing Portugal. They've been an often heroic country that get ignored too much.

It's hard to seriously compare household budgeting and government budgeting because of the extra powers of government. Although I would say that ultimate problem for both to stay out bankruptcy. An average household is one tragic event away from bankruptcy. To bankrupt a modern government it would take mismanagement of historic scale.

Household deals with excessive debt.

1. Pay it out off.

2. Bankruptcy

Government deals with debt.

1. Pay it down

2. Bankruptcy - a or b

a. Lose access to the international credit market. Balance the budget, cold turkey, very painful indeed.

b. Tap the monteraty fund to help balance the budget. You lose control of budget issues, your national assets are leased or sold to foreign investors, laws of the land are changed that foreign investors get first dibs on excess capital(they are first to be paid).

3. Use the extensive taxing power of government. It's a matter of much how GDP % you want to take.

4. An of course you can print currency but there are limits to how much you can print. Effectively your lowering debt by debasing your currently. And of course the national bank can print money to cover the budget overruns, this a very rare situation in modern finance. Taboo. Buts its their.

5. Ride economic growth and increased tax revenues to reduce the significance of the debt, driving its price up and its interest rate down.

Ford is the embodiment of his slogans, as useful as they are empty. There is no ideology, only anger—at the Liberal “elites” currently governing Ontario, and the Progressive Conservative “elites” desperate to keep him out of office.

As such, Ford is the receptacle of choice for both rabid anti-Wynne types and the hordes of disaffected Progressive Conservatives who have understandable enmity for their party establishment. Mulroney would keep Wynne’s minimum wage increase. Elliott actually worked for the Wynne government. Doug would promise to burn the whole damned thing down, along with the carbon tax and a safe injection site or three.

Oddly, Ford’s scorched-earth conservatism has a wide potential amongst voters. His populist, vote-the-bastards-out spiel resonates with anyone who wears a hardhat for a living as it does to social conservatives like Charles McVety, long the bearer of Ontario’s bible belt. As well, his relative success in the 2014 Toronto mayoral race (Ford placed second) would suggest he could win as many as 10 seats in the city, where the Progressive Conservatives are decidedly thin.

Ford isn’t nearly the calibre of politician as his brother, Rob, who didn’t practice retail politics as much as consume it, for good and eventually for ill. Yet in declaring his candidacy early, to the tune of Twisted Sister’s “Where Not Going To Take It”, Doug Ford has already proven that he can convert anger into slogans, and slogans into support.

The Fords are kind of like Canada's versions of Trump. Of course they would have the same playbook, right down to waging a war with their own party elites. Canadians as a whole lean more left, so there's no way Ford (or Trump) would win head to head, but with two parties to the left and only one to the right...we better hope Elliot wins the leadership.